Singapore Bio-utopia

“In 2001,” the entire island city-state of Singapore spontaneously “realised that the rest of Asia was starting to rival it for low-cost manufacturing and electronics, so prime minister Lee Hsien Loong announced that the way forward lay in nurturing its science. Hey presto, an R&D park called Biopolis was built and staffed within two years” – and it has some freaky building names, like “Proteos” and “Chromos” and “Nanos,” the latter of which houses the so-called “Singapore Tissue Network.” (They rent Meg Ryan movies together).Check it out:

[Image: From New Scientist, which is also the source of the quotation, above; click on the image for larger version].

Thomas More’s Utopia meets the biosciences, in a city once described by William Gibson as “Disneyland with the death penalty.” Yet Biopolis is already “a major new bioscience hub that has rocketed up from nothing” – and if anyone has more information on this thing – or if you’ve been there – whether that’s the architects involved, the future development plans, or especially some image, just let me know…A kind of Lonely Planet Guide to the world’s purpose-built bioscience cities. The Rough Guide to Biopolis. Written by BLDGBLOG. Dedicated to Ovid. Anyway, if you’ve got images… send ’em in.

Biopolis is only but the beginning of a greater scheme of things. OneNorth, is what you’re really looking at. Hadid was the initial master-planner for the high-tech town, with people like kurokawa involved in the individual built projects. images and discussions on one-north to be found here, and discussions on Biopolis itself. (you might need to register first, but that’s pretty fuss-free in itself.)

It’s fantastic that there’re people talking about the lesser known projects in Singapore such as Biopolis and OneNorth. There’re now other projects as well in different parts of Singapore such as similar technology aligned areas in Jurong East and the one near Singapore Expo which are all geared towards the same purposes. Thanks for the exposure!